Leaving Public Schools?

School is back in session for many young people across the country. If not this week then surely in the next few weeks. Once again we're hearing attacks on our public school system, with the Southern Baptists taking charge of things.
Al Mohler of SBTS and Daniel Akin of Southeastern Baptist Seminary are calling for exit strategies and the formation of Christian schools -- because apparently without them our children will become secularized. Akin and others in the SBC are charging the public schools with being hostile to religion. Now I live out here in the West and not the South, but I really don't think the schools are hostile to religion. Unless of course, you mean, that schools can't indoctrinate children with Christian theology and practices. That is, after all, our job as the church. I don't send my kid to school to learn what he should learn in church.
I do think there's a place for teaching about religion in school -- but with an eye to breadth of knowledge not conversion.
But, what it would seem some proponents want is an education where creationism is taught rather than evolution, that George Washington was a pious Christian and that the Founders intended us to be a Christian nation, and sex will not be discussed -- unless I suppose it's to dismiss homosexuality as evil. If that's the case -- I'll stick with public education.
Bob Allen has written a very good piece for Ethics Daily.

Comments

Anonymous said…
This exit began with the integration of the public schools in the '60s. There were practically ZERO Protestant schools in the South before desegregation. Then these de facto segregation academies sprang up. The "home schooling" exodus is a new wrinkle--it keeps women at home and keeps white Christians away from the dreaded "multiculturalists." Mohler has been spouting this crap for years--without ever admitting to the racist and classist nature of what he is proposing.
Robert Cornwall said…
I think you have caught on to one of the reasons their hostile to "white Christians"!
Mike L. said…
I don't get it. Why can't these people pour their time and efforts INTO the public system instead of taking their kids out. Why not volunteer at your kid's public school and make it a safe well-run environment.
Robert Cornwall said…
Mike,

It's quite simple -- you can't get Christian education in public schools. And apparently they want to go back to the days of the McGuffey Reader!

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